Essay question. "In 2016, Obama's National Security Adviser Susan Rice told her staff to "stand down" and "knock it off" as they drew up plans to "strike back" against the Russians, according to an account from Michael Isikoff and David Corn in their book "Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump"." Based on this, should Susan Rice be prosecuted for obstruction of justice? If not, explain how this activity by Susan Rice differs from the 10 actions taken by Trump that Mueller regarded as potential incidents of obstruction.

Earlier this morning, Mediaite published a story about a sad-looking Hillary Clinton eating breakfast at a table by herself at a New York resort. This photo of Hillary Clinton eating breakfast by herself is the latest in a series of candid photographs of losing candidates doing normal human things post-election (Mitt Romney pumping gas, anyone?) and "looking sad."

Clinton has been laying low since she garnered 2.8 million more votes than Donald Trump and still lost due to archaic, antiquated electoral laws that give underpopulated states an outsized influence on national politics. She's been hiking trails in Westchester County, NY, browsing books in a Rhode Island bookstore, and doing anything and everything that doesn't involve provoking China on Twitter, inviting boxing promoter-cum-human sideshow Don King to Mar-a-Lago, and making even the most strident "deplorable" wonder if they made a yuge mistake in November.

"Why is it sad hannity like Walter winchell, something drudge himself is no longer like."

You are obviously intelligent and extremely well read, however, your failure to take the little time it should take to write intelligible sentences in many of your postings makes them a mystery to readers such as myself. The above is an example from an earlier thread today.

Phil 3:14:"Drago’s “theory” of a Cuckservative/Leftwing coup against Trump got me thinking about Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling and the movie “The King’s Choice” and the Netflix series “Occupied”."

Yes Phil, the idea that a bunch of leftwingers and LLR types conspired to shield Hillary from prosecutorial danger and to then to setup and frame the republican nominee for President (as a sort of "insurance policy") is all a made up conspiracy "theory" of mine.

Additional conspiracy "Theories" of mine (which are completely ginned up from thin air and/or out of whole cloth):

Hillary's campaign paid her law firm to pay FusionGPS to hire a foreign service agent to conduct hearsay/2nd hand oppo research from Russian sources and then turn that hoax info into an investigation of the opposing candidate for President.

An additional "conspiracy theory" of mine: That republicans like Paul Ryan and John McCain would swear up and down to support policies they have publicly supported for years and agreed to vote on regarding obamacare funding and wall building but that, get this, they really never intended to do any such thing!!

An additional "conspiracy theory" of mine: There is a completely innocent reason why Mitch McConnell was able to force through record numbers of judges at all levels during 2017/18 but was unable to work more than 1 or 2 Trump appointees through for any important roles in critical executive branch agencies, making Trump the first President who could conceivably complete a 4 year term of office without any significant shakeup of his own agencies when the Senate was controlled by his own party.

Remember, to Strawberry Phil, there is an innocent and completely understandable reason for all of that, and it certainly (tut tut) doesn't include any "agreements" or "understandings" or "behind the scenes manuevering" or "purposeful conduct" on the part of anyone.

Fen, if I had to guess, Phil wouldn't challenge any known facts at this point but he seemed to get upset when I suggested that perhaps the only reason Mitt Romney decided, after these many years, to run for the Senate in 2018 (Early 2018) is at that time there was clearly a consensus on the part of many establishment republicans that the nonsensical, moronic, stupid, hopeless ridiculous democrat/LLR smears of Trump were actually true, and that Romney might very well have relished the idea of being a modern day Howard Baker and going to the White House and telling Trump he would have to resign after a House impeachment and, thus, Romney would be a lefty/LLR hero for all time!!

Given everything we've seen (we've yet to hear Romney complain about the weaponization of the federal govt against conservatives/republicans) it seems quite within the realm of plausibility.

Nothing was deliveredBut I can't say I sympathizeWith what your fate is going to beYes, for telling all those liesNow you must provide some answersFor what you sold has not been receivedAnd the sooner you come up with themThe sooner you can leave.

Nothing is better, nothing is bestTake heed of this and get plenty of rest. - Bob Dylan

Ben Shapiro, Spygate skeptic, had Devin Nunes on his show this week. Funny how he pronounced it Devin Noons when introducing him. After 1st commercial break, he said it the way it's more commonly pronounced.

I feed Ziggy the GSD a raw egg with his dried food every morning for breakfast. His coat went from dry to smooth and shiny. Eighteen large eggs at Walmart are under a buck. Spouse won't eat regular eggs, wants organic eggs - $4.00/dozen. A scam.

Speaking of scams, gasoline just crossed over $3.00/ gallon in NW Pa. West Texas Intermediate crude is hovering at a mere $64.00/bbl. Recall gas at $4.00/gal when WTI was $140+/bbl.

I just read about the Bronfman heiress who contributed money to fund a cult leader. The cult leader had sex slaves who were branded. Some of his followers were extremely gorgeous. Professional grade gorgeous, like television stars. You'd think a story like this would get more play. I myself would much rather read about gorgeous sex slaves than college admission scandals. I haven't googled this but my suspicions are that either the cult leader or his Bronfman benefactor were active Democratic supporters. The story gets the morning coverage, but you never hear the rest of the story.......Who here can name one of the Fairfax accusers versus Blaming Ford? Harvey Weinstein is never identified as one of Hillary's chief Hollywood bundlers. Jim Jones enthusiastic support of liberal causes is tactfully ignored in coverage of that tragedy......I'd like to know more about this sex cult story. I have never read a dull story about a sex cult or an interesting story about Russian collusion.

"Clinton has been laying low since she garnered 2.8 million more votes than Donald Trump"

Not relevant. If the popular vote determined the winner, Hillary still would have lost.

"due to archaic, antiquated electoral laws that give underpopulated states an outsized influence on national politics."

Yes, it's called a Republic. You should look it up.

It's cute how you guys keep using expensive words to dress up shoddy ideas. You are mere posers, intellectual light-weights with a thesaurus. A pig smeared with $100 lipstick.

I hereby invoke Chesterton's Fence: we will not entertain your ignorant complaint about the Electoral College until you have demonstrated an understanding of why our Founding Father's chose the EC and what purpose it serves.

And since I suspect you are just a cut-n-paste monkey with no critical thinking skills who doesn't even understand the talking points he is parroting... that time will be never.

Clinton has been laying low since she garnered 2.8 million more votes than Donald Trump and still lost due to archaic, antiquated electoral laws that give underpopulated states an outsized influence on national politics.

LOL. Archaic AND antiquated? Redundant much? Why not anachronistic too? Or did your Boiler Room use up all it's Synonym Vouchers yesterday?

You Wormtongue Sophists have become so immersed in abusing tbe English language with vague unsupported innuendo to weave an illusion of impropriety that you have prioritized prose over evidence. Fluff in place of fact.

Clinton has been laying low since she garnered 2.8 million more votes than Donald Trump and still lost due to archaic, antiquated electoral laws that give underpopulated states an outsized influence on national politics.

Of course, all of those 2.8 million votes came from one state - California. Trump won a majority of all votes in the other 49 states combined.

Of course, also, if Hillary had done better in those other 49 states and won California by only one vote, the Dems surely would be arguing just as loudly that absolutely she rightly and fairly deserved all of California's 55 electoral votes, which of course gives the more populous states an outsized influence.

The problem of the Mueller report for Dems and Romney is that the parts that make Trump look bad are all shit that people believed about Trump already.

A lot of the anecdotes are classic funny Trump. Asking Don McGahn why he takes notes and good lawyers don’t take notes. The stuff about intermediaries letting Cohen, Flynn, and Manafort know the boss will take care of you.

The Dems and media are saying Trump acts like a mafia boss. Great. Mafia bosses get shit done.

Quislings like Romney will sell out their kids for a few dollars more. Mafia bosses are loyal.

In my quest to never miss a good horse race, I was at the Maun Derby in Botswana today. Barely controlled chaos, wonderful. More fun than the Aussie outback races at Junction a couple of years ago. But in the last year, the finest was the magnificent racing at Royal Calcutta. Best polo was at Imphal.

Speaking of laying traps for Trump -- throughout Mueller was pushing for Trump to give in-person testimony, arguing that they could have subpoenaed him, yet all that time, Mueller already knew that there was no evidence of collusion and thus no legal justification for compelling Trump's testimony since all he could do was confirm what was already established.

The ONLY reason they had for putting Trump under oath in person was to try to trip him up on something that they could later say was contrary to their predetermined narrative and thus "false." It was a perjury trap, as people suspected all along.

While George Bush Senior was President he had an affair with a staffer that almost drove Barbara Bush to suicide. Can you imagine the scandal? Good thing the Principled Conservatives covered all that up, else the GOP Establishment would look silly lecturing us about Presidential norms and standards.

(And apoligies to the Deplorables, I wanted to make the Never Trumpers choke down their schadenfreude once they realized it was Barbara instead of Melania)

Hillary won California by 4.27 million votes -- with three million of those votes coming from just five areas: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Alameda, Sonoma, and Santa Clara -- but won nationally by only 2.87 million. Meaning that in the other 49 states combined, Trump WON by 1.4 million votes. And if you take out those five California counties, Trump would have won a majority in all 50 states.

Should the United States be controlled by the whims of five extremist counties in California?

With the release of the Mueller report, it is clear to me that a much higher intensity troll cell must be assigned to this blog. NYT and WAPO can't match the resources of the Althouse roughouse crew. KUDOS!

So in the wake of the Mueller report even in their last ditch dreams, Trump is supposed to have committed no more than what amounts to a process crime. It never seems that anyone of any importance does time for what ordinary people think of as an actual crime.

I first became aware of what we now call process crimes when Martha Stewart went to trial. I thought how do you send someone to prison for lying about a not-crime? Turns out she was just the first of a long list of such "criminals." I'm sick of it.

Achilles finally out some self as a stalinist traitor to the United States. Obviously Mr haji has fried over his self-esteem so bad that he can't even keep his estrogen fueled emotions under a modicum of control.

Blogger rehajm said...Sounds like great fun. In my short time there Maun seemed like one of those wild frontier towns ya read about.

You mean all the donkeys, cows and goats wandering downtown Maun? Being Botswana though, it’s not a shithole. Conservative Christian government, relatively low corruption, sparkling finances (17% debt to GDP) plus maybe the last Eden on the planet, the Okavango Delta. I’ve made a business investment here while I pass through.

Howard said...Achilles finally out some self as a stalinist traitor to the United States. Obviously Mr haji has fried over his self-esteem so bad that he can't even keep his estrogen fueled emotions under a modicum of control.

You support spying on political opponents.

You support gun confiscation.

You support censorship of opposing views.

You support infanticide.

You oppose equal protection under the law.

You support erasing our borders.

You oppose due process.

I will proudly be a traitor in any country run by Democrats and their cuck Republican allies. You are terrible people.

My daughter linked me a Seattle article yesterday with a video showing DOC vans from other counties dumping paroled prisoners under the freeway overpasses where the homeless camps are. I guess they figure Seattle is already so bad no one would notice.

If everyone has a non-bloodied nose just how diverse is it, or can it be?

“We keep our heads down, it don’t work,” he said. “We try to create space for us, it don’t work. We want some money to f***ing cook some fried f***king chicken and be n*****s for once, it don’t work. I just don’t get it.”

"Does Microsoft have any plans to end the current policy that financially incentivizes discriminatory hiring practices? To be clear, I am referring to the fact that senior leadership is awarded more money if they discriminate against Asians and white men,” read the original post by the Microsoft program manager on Yammer, a corporate messaging platform owned by Microsoft." https://qz.com/1598345/microsoft-staff-are-openly-questioning-the-value-of-diversity/

What are they gonna do once white men begin dominating the grievance games? I'd be swearing too, like Al Swearinger.

"due to archaic, antiquated electoral laws that give underpopulated states an outsized influence on national politics."

The Nimrods that espouse this are too smug to consider that if the USA didn't exist today and all fifty republics were to join into a union of The United States Of America, the Senate would be the same as the 17th amendment outlined and the Electoral College would be as it is as a necessary compromise.

"due to archaic, antiquated electoral laws that give underpopulated states an outsized influence on national politics."

A progressive method would deny individuals in diverse circumstances in the manner that the Pro-Choice quasi-religious/ethical code misses the baby for a profitable clump of cells, diversity misses character for color of skin, feminism misses people for sex preferences, immigration reform misses native and unplanned people for alien replacements, social justice misses justice, social progress leaves children behind, and consensus science misses observation, replication, and deduction.

Mock- Wow.What the locals in power in Denver under fascist dictator Polis want to do here is remove the ability for police to ask the homeless (the drug users, really) to vacate private property or to vacate city property. They want to handcuff the police. **Brought to us locally by KC Becker, the fascist nanny-mommy from Boulder.

Our DSL through Verizon sucks. It's down on a regular basis. The only thing worse is their customer service. Anyone using a personal hot spot? I have an Iphone and use it's hot spot, but it's somewhat slow. Any ideas?

BleachBit: My parents lived in Boulder and always thought it was insane and run by irrational airheads. I was there last year to visit their graves and found the traffic worse than Denver. What's up with that?

Mockturtle.Your folks are buried in Boulder.. huh.All the irrational airheads get their start on the insane Boulder City Council. They are power adicts and have learned to move onto greener pastures at the State Capital in Denver. KC Becker is local nanny-mommy from Boulder and she is now running the show in Denver, shoving as many radical ideas down our throats under cover of darkness, as fast as she can.But she has such a sweet nanny-mommy voice. Next step - turn Denver into Seattle by rolling out the red carpet for drug addicts.

The traffic in B-town is bad mostly because of the students, but also the large businesses (like Google) and all the new fancy hotels. Lots of people work here, no one can afford to live here. Leaving town at 3:00 or after M-F is pure commuter gridlock. I find driving in Denver these days is a total nightmare.

@ mockturtle .... We have a Verizon D Link wireless router, which is not the problem. The DSL equipment shed 1/4 mile up the dirt road is the problem. The shed doors are always open as Verizon repair people live there (sarcasm). If it goes down on weekends, it may or may not be fixed on Monday.

To be clear this was the sentence that lead to my concern for Drago’s conspiracy mongering:

“The ONLY reason Mitt Romney ran for Senate was so he could be part of the "NOBLE Republican Senate Class of 2019" who would go to Trump and tell him he had to resign or be impeached and thus, be "heroes" forever celebrated in the History books.”

I am deeply concerned about the Steele dossier, the illegitimate FISA warrant, the “insurance policy” etc. And I do hope that all of that is thoroughly investigated.

But, most important I am thrilled Drago has bestowed on me a nickname, Strawberry Phil. I’m not sure if Drago caught the allusion but so what.

It’s funny that those of the Left can’t get over their loss in 2016 AND the Trumpkins on the Right can’t get over the victory. For example, Rocket Man became that guy with whom Trump had a “special relationship” with to now the dictator ending the talks and getting back to what he likes most, shooting off rockets. There’s a word for that diplomatic effort:

Good news Althouse. Trump in Green bay next Saturday, you already know.But Klobuchar in Milwauke May 8th. Tailgaters gonna hold a stapler throwing contest. To be fair to her, sometimes you gotta break some eggs to make an omelette. Guard accordingly Buttiegig.

"The rate of violent [and property] crime today remains well below the levels seen from the 1980s into the early 2000s."

Uh-huh. A lot has changed regarding what not considered a crime. Sleeping on the sidewalk? Pooping in the street? Shooting up in a storefront? How well would those have been tolerated in the 80's? Even in Seattle? [I was living there and, though aggressive panhandling was getting out of hand, there was little or none of the above.]